The presence and strength of resource competition can influence how organisms adaptively respond to environmental change. Selection may thus reflect a balance between two forces, adaptation to an environmental optimum and evolution to avoid strong co...
Mediterranean wetlands are suitable ecosystems for studying metacommunity theory, since they are isolated ecosystems within a land matrix with well-established limits, often with watersheds destined for agricultural uses. The zooplankton community of...
Our study shows that the current levels of anthropogenic exploitation of the Sicilian wetlands (Italy), combined with the likely exacerbation of climate-driven variables, are unsustainable and could soon exclude many bird species from this metacommun...
Agricultural intensification has been associated with biodiversity declines, habitat fragmentation and loss in a number of organisms. Given the prevalence of this process, there is a need for studies clarifying the effects of changes in agricultural...
This study investigated the mechanisms determining macrophyte species composition in 23 Andalusian Mediterranean mountain wetlands (southern Spain). We employed a methodology combining two approaches: a pattern-based approach utilizing Elements of Me...
A central debate in metacommunity theory concerns how the relative importance of ecological processes varies with spatial scale. We addressed this by integrating global soil fauna metacommunity datasets to analyze the effects of spatial extent (the s...
While macroinvertebrates are extensively investigated in many river ecosystems, meta-community ecology perspectives in alpine streams are very limited. We assessed the role of ecological factors and temporal dynamics in the macroinvertebrate meta-com...
Habitat fragmentation is often assumed to negatively impact species diversity because smaller, more isolated populations on smaller habitat patches are at a higher extinction risk. However, some empirical and theoretical studies suggest that landscap...
Poyang Lake is a typical floodplain lake hydrologically linked to the middle-lower Yangtze River. Its peripheral saucer-shaped sub-lakes undergo seasonal hydrological alternation between isolation and connectivity driven by annual water level fluctua...
Rodents, as a core component of desert ecosystems and an important indicator of environmental changes, are ideal subjects for studying the impacts of fluctuations in climatic conditions on wildlife. Based on field data from the southern Alxa Desert (...
In recent years; digital media has garnered widespread interest from various domains. Despite advancements in the technology of digital media for globalized communication; disparities persist in user interaction patterns across different regions. The...
20 April 2018
Since the 1960s, we have witnessed the development and growth of community mental health care that continues to dominate mental health policy and practice. Several high-income countries have implemented community mental health care programmes but for...
Saltworks are interesting sites for aquatic ecology, where marine phytoplankton plays a fundamental role in regulating ecosystem processes and sustaining large-scale biodiversity. This paper presents successional, structural, and dynamical traits of...
The ecology of benthic diatoms is scarce in diatom reviews, and it seems that the loss of interest in their local ecology (populations–communities) coincides with an increase in metacommunity studies. We include a review of the latter to highli...
Flood pulse related physical variables (FLOOD) can affect zooplankton community structure through local factors directly and can also influence through regional dispersal factors of metacommunity concepts indirectly. Therefore, we infer that spatial...
Located on the southwest slope and plain areas of the Altai Mountains in China, this study aims to explore bird composition variation (beta diversity) in mountain landscape (metacommunity M), riparian landscape (metacommunity R), desert landscape (me...
(1) Background: Is variation among the communities of a metacommunity higher than within the communities? Community ecologists and population geneticists often characterize the structure of metacommunities by partitioning variation (diversity) into t...
Earthworms heavily modify the soil microbiome as it passes throughout their guts. However, there are no detailed studies describing changes in the composition, structure and diversity of soil microbiomes during gut transit and once they are released...
The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 resulted in a cataclysmic restructuring of its surrounding landscapes. The Pumice Plain is one of these landscapes, where tree species such as Sitka willow (Salix sitchensis) and their dependent communities ha...
The wetlands of Sardinia (Italy) supply food and shelter for many waterbird species that migrate along the central–eastern Mediterranean bird flyway. Despite many different policies and laws (the Birds and Habitats Directives, the European Wate...
Understanding the processes that shape parasite community structure across spatial scales is essential for linking ecological theory with host–parasite dynamics. Using a metacommunity framework, we examined the metacommunity of helminth parasit...
Associating anthropogenic effects with variations in biodiversity is key to understanding how anthropogenic impacts are extrapolated in public supply micro-watersheds. The structure and dynamics of metacommunities in aquatic environments depend not o...
We introduce the term metacity as a conceptual framework that can be shared by ecologists and designers and applied across the wide variety of urban habitats found around the world. While the term metacity was introduced by UN-HABITAT to designate hy...
Spatial heterogeneity affects plant community composition and diversity. It is particularly noticeable in annual plant communities, which vary in space and time over short distances and periods, forming meta-communities at the regional scale. This st...
The long-term resilience of Pyrenean forests in the face of historical anthropogenic clearing remains largely unknown. In this paper, a high-resolution (decadal to subdecadal) paleoecological study of mid-elevation Pyrenean forests is presented that...
To explain the distribution and abundance of species, ecology searches for general models. A pattern often encountered in nature is the interspecific abundance–occupancy relationship (AOR), which describes how the mean local abundance of specie...
(1) Background: We analyzed the diatom community structure of the surface sediments, in three permanent ponds in the Pantanal of Mato Grosso, Brazil, to better understand how biota in these aquatic environments depend on structural connectivity and f...
Genetic diversity determines evolutionary potential. Without a variable genome, natural selection cannot act. Habitat fragmentation is the single largest threat to global biodiversity, as it reduces or eliminates gene flow among populations, thereby...
Bacteria, an integral part of aquatic ecosystems, are responsible for the circulation of matter and flow of energy. Since bacterioplankton rapidly responds to any natural and human-induced disturbances in the environment, it can serve as a bioindicat...
Ecological connectivity among protected Natura 2000 sites is a priority for conservation in Europe due to the increasing pressure on biodiversity from human activities and climate change. Drove roads, the traditional paths used to move livestock thro...
The roots of most plants host diverse assemblages of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), which benefit the plant hosts in diverse ways. Even though we understand that such AMF assemblages are non-random, we do not fully appreciate whether and how env...
The evaluation of the effects of environmental factors on natural communities has been one of the principal approaches in ecology; although, over the past decade, increasing importance has been given to spatial factors. In this context, we evaluated...
Determining the patterns of diversity and community composition in headwater streams is fundamental to river biodiversity conservation. Environmental selection has been assumed to be a major force driving temperate macroinvertebrate assembly. To test...
Lotic environments contain a disproportionate amount of biodiversity given their relatively small proportion of the worldwide landscape. We conducted a systematic literature search of research directed towards understanding factors that influence bio...
Although changes in habitat area, driven by changes in sea level, have long been considered as a possible cause of marine diversity change in the Phanerozoic, the lack of Pleistocene extinction in the Californian Province has raised doubts, given the...
In this article, we employ a Batesonian systems thinking approach to analyze politically polarized and politically polarizing encounters in the contemporary United States. We bring together Bateson’s concepts of schismogenesis, double binds, me...
Wildfires have continued to increase in frequency and severity in Southern California due in part to climate change. To gain a further understanding of microbial soil communities’ response to fire and functions that may enhance post-wildfire re...
There are >200 different types of human papilloma virus (HPV) of which >51 infect genital epithelium, with ~14 of these classed as high-risk being more commonly associated with cervical cancer. During development of the disease, high-risk types...
Environmental conditions affect outdoor sports performance. This is particularly true in some sports, especially in the sport of sailing, where environmental parameters are extremely influential as they interact directly with strategic analysis of th...
The diversity and distribution of the amphibians in Rwanda was critically reviewed to provide a reliable species inventory for informed conservation management. The checklist of the amphibian species of Rwanda is based on results of our own fieldwork...
The Sicilian wetlands (Italy) are seriously threatened by human activities and ongoing climate change. The loss of these wetlands as migratory stepping stones could severely hamper the migratory flow of many bird species along the central Mediterrane...
Habitat destruction is a major driver of biodiversity decline, yet how it reshapes multispecies coexistence by altering interaction structure remains unclear. We adopt a spatially explicit metacommunity model framework under a homogeneity assumption...
Most infections by human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are `acute’, that is non-persistent. Yet, for HPVs, as for many other oncoviruses, there is a striking gap between our detailed understanding of chronic infections and our limited data on the early sta...
Aquaculture plays a major role in the coastal economy of the Mediterranean Sea. This raises the issue of the impact of fish cages on the surrounding environment. Here, we explore the impact of aquaculture on the composition of the digestive gland mic...
We studied how multiple-stresssors in tributaries affect function, diversity, and physical habitat of recipient downstream ecosystems. Using a mesocosm model of a stream network, we manipulated sediment and nutrients individually and in combination i...
Bacterial activities drive most of the Earth’s biogeochemical cycles and, thus, much effort has been devoted to understanding the mechanisms governing their community assemblies in nature. In freshwater ecosystems, selection has been found to b...
Changes in soil microbial communities in response to hydrocarbon pollution are critical indicators of disturbed ecosystem conditions. A core component of these communities that is functionally adjusted to the life-history traits of the host and envir...
Student mental health is a challenging topic in higher education, with institutions aiming to develop policies and practices to support students’ personal and professional development. This study examined students’ expectations of their t...
The ancient lakes Mikri Prespa and Megali Prespa are located in SE Europe at the transnational triangle and are globally recognized for their ecological significance. They host hundreds of flora and fauna species, and numerous types of habitat of con...
Rivers are intrinsically linked with human settlement and civilization development. This has forced upon rivers a multitude of pressures. Arguably, one of the most pervasive pressures is river network fragmentation. The consequent loss of longitudina...
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